MY LIFE IS JUST AN X FILE

To be fair, I think that it’s impatience more than grouchiness. And often this impatience is directed at myself. I decide I’m boring. Uninspiring. Stuck in a rut.

Consequently, to borrow an observation made in one of my school reports, a kind of ‘John can do better’ mood envelops me.

Back in the mid 1990s when Melrose Place was on the airwaves such a mood descended upon me. I was working ridiculously long hours and my life had taken on an air of unreality. I felt like I was in a bad movie reading the lines but not really taking part. There but not present.

I’m sure many of you can relate to this.

Who am I? What am I? Why am I? Am I going anywhere? Am I doing anything worthwhile? Or am I just going through the motions?

I guess that’s what they call a mid-life crisis, albeit that given the comfort and stability of my safe suburban life ‘crisis’ seems like an overstatement.

Nonetheless, I was in a funk, which reached rock bottom when I found myself watching Melrose Place just to chill out and fill in time.

Enough! I said. Switched off the TV and wrote this song: (My life is just an) X File.

An amusingly grumpy soliloquy, which makes me smile when I listen back to it now. I hope will do the same for you.

Once again, this is song that was never released. I’m not even sure I even own it anymore. I have so many of those…sigh.